I know what I am
by kalipsos
Summary: Possible triggers ahead. [Mental Hospital AU.] Karkat Vantas is a patient admitted for violent delusions that he was - or is - not from Earth. Gamzee Makara is a long-time patient with foggy dreams of making the world better with the aid of whoever so wishes to speak with him at that time. But.. is Karkat really that crazy? Is it all just in his head?
1. Recreation

For four years he'd been waking up, screaming, sobbing until he fell asleep again. Sobbing until someone shushed him. For the past few weeks he'd been getting worse - screaming about people they all swear he never knew, tearing at the skin on his head, hurting himself and crying and yelling and after a week of being in solitude, sobbing silently and staring at the ceiling, they finally decided to let him come out.

The poor thing was terrified of every little noise. The clanging of doors, and especially the dripping of water, the way it sounded, and he began to cry when he saw it drip, saw it run down the drain. He covered his ears all the way into the rec room, where very few people were. He could see feet, bare or soft-slippered wandering the floors - and he refused to look any further than this in fear he might start seeing his nightmares again. Might start suffering the same strange hallucinations he'd managed to run away from for now. His fingers shook, and he glanced back at the nurses as they let him go and told him very quietly to behave himself and suddenly he realised just how long it had been since he'd really seen anyone.

Perhaps it was time he looked up and faced it? Perhaps he'd been hiding for far too long? He could have sworn it wasn't like this when he first went to talk to someone, when he sat on a seat and he spoke to a face he couldn't remember, and his grey skin crawled and he ran out of-.. oh. No, no, no. No grey skin. It was pale, he was pale. Not grey. He had to remember that.

The doctor said that his memory was a prison - he had to forget or else he'd be a slave to memory, a slave to what he thought was real. To the past, to something that was anything but the future or the present - and so he often took time to go see the doctor again because he couldn't remember everything he'd said - he liked to think it was because he really wasn't a slave to his memory at all.

He took a seat in the corner and just nibbled his lip while he thought on whether or not he should look up, and was just about to completely give up on the thought when he felt the wall receive a light thump by his head, he heard the soft sound of material sliding down it and then the second tiny thump as the figure beside him landed on it's backside and slid its bare heels along the floor so that long legs were stretched out.

" Heyyy! " At first it startled him - the voice, that was. Anything other than the nurses was new and strange and.. this one was soothing. He liked it. He liked the way it lilted and how rough it sounded, he grew fond of it quickly but took no measures to respond, nor did he look up. He just stared past the length of the long legs and stretched his own out in comparison, only to wrinkle his nose when he realised they were not as long and this person beside him was much, much taller. He heard them laughing. Another sound he liked - laughing. He didn't hear much of it. Well - not real laughter, anyway. There was always a very strange tint to the laughter when he was dreaming in a strange, strange place, but this laughter was bright - like the sounds he .. was sure that he had enjoyed outside of where he was now. Outside of white hallways or pale green recreational rooms, the seventeen year old had very much enjoyed church bells - the laughter was very much like that. " ..You don't talk much! That's okay, not many people here do, no pressure man~ "

He paused for a moment before deciding to look up and meet the expectant, owlish gaze of the tall being beside him. He saw that it was indeed a boy like he'd speculated - a thin, handsome boy with strange, bright orchid eyes that were in no way the pale, strange blue-grey of the eyes of the nurse. These eyes were beautiful, and-.. famili-.. no. No- He opened his eyes wide, and stared, and the droopy eyed boy only smiled kindly, and reached out with a hand that had long, long fingers and he had been waiting for him to shake his hand before Karkat began to scream. He cried and he shook his head and he screamed and he wriggled further into the corner and yelled ' no! ' into the silence, and the poor thing on the side of him just looked awfully confused and was yanked terribly harshly away from him as if he had done somethng wrong. Which it seemed the nurses supposed he might have.

" Gamzee, what did you _do_?! "

" Nothin' - I swear! It wasn't me, it wasn't, it wasn't me, no one told me to, no one said anything he just got all upset- "

" Karkat, Karkat- listen! LISTEN. No one is going to hurt you- NO ONE is going to hurt you, be quiet! " Which only made the confused little thing scream louder until Gamzee wriggled through the three-person wall of nurses and scooped Karkat into his arms, and pulled him gently against his chest, and all at once there was no screaming. No crying whatsoever. Like a child presented with its favourite person in the world - a parent, or perhaps a beloved toy.

They sat in the same spot for hours while nurses scratched their heads in confusion. With Karkat telling Gamzee very quietly about everything as Gamzee ran his long fingers through Karkat's dark, toussled hair and listened very contently.

It was as though they'd known eachother all their lives.


	2. Welcome

Gamzee had been a problematic child before he was admitted to the 'home' by his father - who hadn't enough time to care for an angry child like Gamzee who caused trouble and got into fights - killed people at only thirteen. To get away from the charges he was lumped into this home and locked up and doped up to his eyeballs in medicines and injections and convinced him he was crazy and the he needed help. For six years now he'd fluctuated constantly between murdering people and doctors and nurses and being the most gentle, kind-spoken soul known to anyone in the building. He was usually pretty bad.

He had been good since he met Karkat. 'They' had been nice and quiet when Karkat was allowed to come into the rec room and the two of them sat together. The voices were mere, barely audible whispers that Gamzee found himself being able to ignore - and sometimes he couldn't hear them at all! It was wonderful, it really was. So as long as he was being good, he didn't have to sit in the lonely room with all the scratch marks and the colours they didn't see, he was allowed his own little room and he was free to wander to the rec room if he asked the nurse first.

" Hey, hey, can I go? Karbro's probably there by now, I think. "

" Karkat isn't very well just now, but you can go to the rec room if you want to. "

" ... " A frown, " Is there something wrong with him..? " Oh no!

" He's alright, but we need to keep a monitor on him. "

...

Gamzee only frowned a bit more and leaned his forehead against the door of his 'bedroom' and he began to slowly, slowly scowl through the few bars he could see out of. They never told him anything - the chatter in his head increased considerably as they all seemed to register that there would be no small, warm arms to hold Gamzee for a while. No one to talk to but them and then he'd get bad again and he'd do bad things and he didn't want to - he didn't want to do that, he wanted Karkat and he wanted to feel the hush. " ..Okay.. "

After a few hours of sitting in the corner, tapping his foot in exasperation as his headache worsened and chewing his thumbnail, Gamzee got up and wandered to the door. He had devised a plan to get his Karkat back and keep him safe - no one made him feel better but Gamzee, he'd said so himself, and Gamzee knew how the nurses treated everyone. It wasn't acceptable, and especially not with his best friend - they couldn't hurt him like that, they couldn't. " ..Can I go to the rec room, now? "

There was no reply, but the lock clicked and the door opened, and Gamzee came wandering out, still chewing his thumbnail but brightening his smile so she didn't question for a minute whether or not he was 'feeling alright.' He took a glance at the clock and then looked thoughtful. Okay - to his knowledge, pills went around at 7:15 and by now it was 7:20 if the clock on the wall was right - and they started from the bottom floor. Gamzee was on the third floor and the 'special help' cells for the sick patients were all on the top floor because he wasn't allowed up there - never had been, but he'd never been ill enough to be allowed to go up there.

Two floors up - he just had to run for it, right? The bad feeling in his gut refused to unknot itself, it just worsened as he wandered behind the nurse, moved his thumb from his mouth and then reached out and thumped her hard enough on the side of the head to knock her right out - and then he bolted off round the corner as she fell and made his way for the stairs, grabbing the railings and hoisting himself up as many stairs at a time as he possibly could with his long, spindly legs to aid him.

Now, he'd never been up here conscious before. He'd never been in the hallways when he could really see - they turned off the lights at night and he was usually stuck in a cell anyway, it didn't matter much to his sanity whether or not it was light or it was pitch black. So to see it now was strange - the only reason he knew where it was, was because he was a keen listener and quite the smooth-talker, so reading clip-boards while he's distracted the nurses with some kind of antic was easy as pie for him to do. Gamzee kind of wished he hadn't seen it now, it was.. strange. He glanced around as he headed up the stairwell landing and was faced with a security code, and he wondered for moments how to decipher such a thing, and he stood and he thought and then he paused.

He'd saw something quite a while ago - in a dream, maybe? On some paper? He had no idea - but it cropped up the back of his mind and it yelled to be heard, to be complied to, and he extended a long finger to punch in the passcode.

19-2-21-18-2

B.

. . .

welcome.


End file.
